by Barbra Poelle
I am in California and it is perfect and sunny and gorgeous here. Husband is sprawled out on the balcony as he has the day off from roofing or gun running or whatever it is he does and I am working away on the laptop, happy as can be, except that I can’t hear out of my left ear.
Hm?
Yes, I have a sinus infection and I am deaf in one ear because of it, and I am about to get on a plane to fly home, so that sound of screaming in catastrophic pain will be me, but it is hard to feel too bad for myself when I just spent the weekend with some truly wonderful people in the SF RWA chapter, courtesy of their President (AHEM! and resident 2010 Edgar Nominee) Sophie Littlefield.
I had met some of the chapter members previously, in fact, years ago, author Josie Brown was my first ever real life friend in publishing, Like, I was still covered in agent afterbirth and staggering around the office on shaky legs mewling and bleating when I e-mailed her and said, “YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND.” (No, seriously. Have you ever seen a video of a baby giraffe being born? That’s what it is like your first few weeks of agenting: you’re in this quiet warmth and then with a gasping lurch you drop 4 feet to the ground covered in unidentifiable secretions and everything is too loud and too bright and there are big things waiting in the shadows to kill you and/or wear your skin.)
So I am acquainted with a few of these members, and also invited were my awesome noir author Robert Lewis, and my kickass non-fic author Dr. Lissa Rankin, so I felt, going in, pretty safe and secure with my topics and audience. Okay, now, at the dinner on Friday night, I wasn’t feeling great, my ear was plugged and I was in that weird initial blush of sickness when you are both stuffy and juicy. But I held my own, and then retired to my hotel room. However, the next morning, I am going to say, conservatively, that when I stood up to speak I was probably logging in an internal temperature of 115 degrees and maybe even enjoying some light hallucinations. (Unless that WAS Viggo Mortenson refilling the coffee decanter.)
So sidebar with me here: Husband and I have a friend named Sean who once told us the story of an evening he was in midtown drinking with some friends. The booze flowed thickly and freely and a good deal past midnight Sean stepped outside to have a cigarette. As he lit up, he noticed a good-looking young woman heading up the street towards him. Now, Sean is a very personable dude, and has plenty of luck with the ladies. He tells us that he stepped away from the wall casually, intercepted her gait, smiled, put his hand out and drawled out confidently, “Hey there, my name is Sean and I am inside with a couple of friends. Please come in and hang out, I’d love to buy you a drink.”
Immediately, the young woman screamed and threw her purse at him and tore down the street in the opposite direction, sobbing.
Because gentle readers, in Sean’s mind he was all Johnny Suave, but in reality, with about a .27 BAL and day’s worth of stubble, lurching from the darkness, slurring gibberish and reaching for this poor girl with a clawing paw, he was more Johnny Statistic-Maker.
So come back with me. Now, what I would LIKE to imagine, is that I rose, thanked Sophie for the intro, and then calmly and conversationally discussed the current trends in romance and the greater publishing industry. I would like to think I was charming and perhaps at times witty, but kept the tone light, informative, and consistent. I would like to think I came across as confident and determined, yet approachable.
The truth? I am fairly certain it was like watching a Tasmanian devil be shot out of a cannon. I can distinctly remember at one point one half of my brain screaming to the other, “You just said juxtipocation. You just said JUXTIPOCATION.” And the other half of my brain snapping “There will be a full system shut down in less than 4 minutes, conclude, dammit! Conclude!” And then maybe I blurted, “…and that is why Betty Freidan is one of the top 100 Americans in history….” then I threw the microphone at Sophie and lurched to the bathroom where I almost passed out.
Now, a day or so later, here with a box of Vick’s infused Kleenex and enough pseudoephedrine in my system to kill a pony, I am somewhat more lucid, so I would like to say something in case I didn’t on Saturday:
When starting out in your intended genre, you should stick to Write 2000 Read 2000. That means you should be writing 2000 words every day and reading 2000 words every day in your targeted genre. This will keep both your intent and your commercial viability in check, as well as help you to intrinsically identify the current trends. That way you don’t have to trust these things to just any festering Petri dish who comes to speak to your chapter.
And in case I didn’t say it then: it was my pleasure and thanks for having me, gang!
